As part of the “HAW-direkt” funding program of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society (HWG LU) is receiving funding to expand the research project “AI-Supported Campus, Building, and Energy Management,” or KICaGEM for short. Originally conducted from 2023 to 2025, the research project focused on developing an intelligent system for collecting and analyzing energy and indoor climate data, based on Internet of Things (IoT) communication technologies—in particular the “Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN)” wireless technology— as well as on artificial intelligence methods. The goal was to make building and energy management at the university campus on Ernst-Boehe-Straße in Ludwigshafen more efficient and to strengthen the university’s research expertise in the areas of “digitalization” and “sustainability.”
To deepen and expand on previous research activities, the new funding from the “HAW direkt” program will be used to acquire an additional network of devices to further expand the existing research system infrastructure. Among other things, this includes so-called remote control units, which will be used to collect data from the building management system of the new University Building C and integrate it into the existing system. Furthermore, plans are in place to install two weather stations on the university campus on Ernst-Boehe-Straße and at the university’s East Asian Institute (OAI), which is located directly on the Rhine. The weather stations will be used to collect local, site-specific climate data in real time. This will allow for further improvement of existing AI-based indoor climate analyses by taking external environmental factors into account. In addition, there are plans to install additional energy meters and sensors at the OAI to monitor indoor climate and energy consumption in the lecture halls at this university location, which has not yet been integrated into the system. This will also allow AI-based data analyses to be extended to this location.
The expansion of the research system infrastructure is expected to yield new research findings that can serve as a reference for transfer projects with public properties or companies aimed at designing and implementing intelligent, customized campus networks.
Background on “
” The “HAW-direkt” funding program is specifically aimed at state universities of applied sciences. Funding could be applied for to procure equipment on a project-by-project basis for research initiatives that make a specific contribution to socially important areas such as health, digitalization, and sustainability—or, in particular, to one of the state’s policy priorities: biotechnology, artificial intelligence, or hydrogen technologies.
All seven state-funded universities of applied sciences in the state will receive a total of approximately one million euros from July 2026 through the end of December 2026 as part of the “HAW-direkt” funding program to establish and expand their research capacities in the fields of health, digitalization, and sustainability. The state funding—which specifically supports a total of 17 initiatives—is also intended to strengthen the universities of applied sciences in their competition for third-party funding and for successful participation in funding programs, such as the HAW funding programs of the German Research Foundation (DFG), EU funding programs, or the funding programs of federal ministries, in particular the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR).
For more information, visit: https://mwwg.rlp.de/service/pressemitteilungen/detail/wissenschaftsminister-clemens-hoch-haw-direkt-hochschulen-fuer-angewandte-wissenschaften-erhalten-auch-2026-around-one-million-euros-for-expanding-research-capabilities
Contact:
Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society
Department of Services and Consulting
Prof. Dr. Frank Thomé
Chair of Business Informatics
Tel. 0621/5203-213
Email: frank.thome@ 8< SPAM protection, please remove >8 hwg-lu.de
